


Bad Medicine

by MarcusRowland



Series: Terawatt Tales [1]
Category: Breaking Bad, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Department S & Jason King, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, House M.D., Numb3rs, Stargate SG-1, The OC, The Secret World of Alex Mack, The West Wing
Genre: Background Relationships, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 04:28:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5613943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarcusRowland/pseuds/MarcusRowland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is fanfic of fanfic, an authorised sequel to Diane Castle's <i><a href="http://tthf.me/Rlcd">The Secret Return of Alex Mack</a></i> and related stories, and makes little sense if you aren't familiar with the setting. I've included some notes to make things a little clearer, but to avoid spoilers you'll probably want to read them first. The main fandom is <i>The Secret World of Alex Mack</i>, with AU versions of characters from other fandoms, most notably <i>Buffy</i> and <i>Stargate SG-1</i>.</p><p>Several years after the end of <i>The Secret World of Alex Mack</i> her world is experiencing a super-powers singularity, with new technologies emerging to create more and more superheroes and villains with a range of powers. The SRI (Superpowers Research Initiative) is America's foremost agency handling the problem. This is one of their cases.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Secret Return of Alex Mack](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/166114) by Diane Castle. 



> This is set in the Teraverse, the world of Diane Castle’s _[The Secret Return of Alex Mack](http://tthf.me/Rlcd)_ and related stories, and contains many spoilers for it; many thanks to Diane Castle for allowing me to play with the setting. If you haven’t read her stories (or at least _[The League of Extraordinary Women](http://tthf.me/Glvw)_ and _[The Secret Return of Alex Mack](http://tthf.me/Rlcd)_ ) this won’t make a lot of sense. I’ve tried to avoid anything that conflicts with the series and stories by other authors set in this universe, apologies if I’ve missed anything.
> 
> If you haven't read these stories you should be aware that in _The Secret World of Alex Mack_ a drug called GC-161 can trigger superpowers including telekinesis, lightning projection, and shape changing into a silvery "morph" like a blob of mercury. The foremost superhero is Alex Mack, who adopts the superhero identity of Terawatt in _The Secret Return of Alex Mack_. Several other technologies for creating superpowers appear in _The Secret Return of Alex Mack_ ; most notably, in the 1970s-80s an evil conspiracy created "Breslynn Orphans," genetically modified children with enhanced strength, speed, intelligence and stamina.
> 
> There are a LOT of crossovers in here – since some of them should come as surprises I’ll list them briefly at the end of chapters and in more detail at the end of the story. Nearly all of the characters belong to their creators, media conglomerates of doom, and other people who are not me – there is no intent to plagiarise other’s work or profit from it, this story may not be distributed on a profit-making basis. There are some spoilers for TV series etc., but nothing in the last couple of years.
> 
> Most of the biochemistry and medicine in this story should be taken with several pinches of salt. In fact the salt is probably better for you…

_Mathéo Granet emptied a sack of packages onto the conveyor belt that would take them through Lyon sorting office, waited for them to start moving through the system, and turned to grab the next sack. As he turned there was a loud juddering noise, the belt stopped, and a bell started to ring. “Merde!” He turned back empty-handed, and tried to spot the latest badly-wrapped abomination to disrupt La Poste. There, in the second aperture, the edge of a padded envelope was caught between the belt and one of the flaps that was supposed to keep it on track. It happened occasionally, if the end of a package was sufficiently thin. As usual the fix was simple; he grabbed it, pulled it out, slapped the reset button to get the belt moving again, and tossed the package into the bin for manual sorting. And noticed that his fingertips were wet._

_Seconds later he screamed as they started to burn._

*

“Thanks for coming in,” said General Jack O’Neill. “Ever heard of a Josiah Bartlet? Maybe as Jed Bartlet?”

Samantha Finn thought for a moment. “It rings a very faint bell but I can’t quite remember. Something political? Should I know him?”

Jack shook his head as he got a slim file from a drawer. “Not especially. He’s an economist, won a Nobel Prize in the nineties, and currently governor of New Hampshire. There was talk of him running for Senator, but he turned down the nomination on medical grounds.”

“Which were?”

“The poor bastard has MS. He’s spent the last year or so in a wheelchair, he’s not planning to stand for re-election.”

“Okay. Does he want Terawatt to do an infomercial for MS charities or something?”

“I think most of her media time goes to that anti-bullying charity. No, three days ago someone sent him four vials of GC-161 with Paradise Valley Chemical labels, and an anonymous note suggesting it might be worth trying to use it to cure his MS. He decided to contact the FBI instead.”

"Four vials of the pure chemical, not a dilute solution?” O’Neill nodded. They were worth thousands of dollars on the black market. "Did they include any antidote?"

"No. The note said to contact major health centres or Paradise Valley Chemicals if it was needed."

"By the time you got anywhere any bad effects would probably be permanent."

“I'm guessing that someone got hold of the GC-161 but didn't have access to the antidote. The labels are stamped with manufacturing dates a few months before the Atron scandal broke, when they were still trying to get FDA approval. I'll have to check with Terawatt's support team but I don't think the antidote was even invented then." Although they both knew Terawatt's real identity they tried to avoid naming her unnecessarily. "Danielle Atron trashed a lot of files that should have been kept; it may take a while to find out what happened to the vials after that.”

“There’s been a little speculation about medical uses, but GC-161 is incredibly dangerous; it’d more likely kill you than cure you.”

“Would you be interested in overseeing the investigation?” He handed her the file.

“Me? I’m not even on the SRI payroll.”

“Riley mentioned that Doctors Without Borders don’t want you back in the field until you’re a hundred percent fit. We’d like to offer you a short-term contract, civil service grade GS-12, that’s about equivalent to a Major. Pay scale to match, of course.”

“That seems high for a short-term contract.”

“You might need to give orders, or get some priority on requests for information. Things go more smoothly if you don’t have to refer everything back to me. Walter will set you up with an office and computer access, and he’ll arrange transport and anything else you need.”

“What exactly would be involved?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. You decide how you want to handle it; I’ll give you whatever backing you need within reason. But if possible keep a low profile. At the moment nobody really thinks of the stuff as a miracle cure, if that idea gets publicity all hell could break loose.”

*

“Thank you for seeing me, Governor.”

“It’s my pleasure,” said Jed Bartlet. “My wife speaks highly of your work.” At her look of surprise he added “She’s a thoracic surgeon.”

“Abbey Bartlet? I should have realised you were related.” Thoracic surgery was a small world, and they’d met at conferences.

“She’s operating today or I’m sure she would have stayed to meet you.”

“Please give her my regards.”

“Let’s get down to business. You’re here about the GC-161?”

“Yes. I’m sure you’ve already been asked this; do you have any idea who might have sent it?”

“None at all. It was postmarked from Perth Amboy, I can’t think of anyone I know there. The message was a computer printout, all it said was what the stuff was and that it might change my body chemistry enough to cure my MS. Signed as ‘a friend.’”

“I’ve seen a copy. Was there anything about the language that seemed familiar? Phrasing or word choice?”

“If anything it seemed… dry, a little technical. It started off by saying that the sender was saddened to hear of my illness, but the impression I got was that they saw it as an opportunity, a way to make me act as a high-profile guinea-pig. That just made me wonder what the snags were likely to be, so I did a little research then called the FBI.”

“You weren’t tempted to try it?”

“I’m a Catholic, they teach us a lot about temptation. But I’ll be honest, it has a lot more to do with pride.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“The way I understand it, this drug can alter the way you think. All of my achievements; my degrees, the Nobel Prize, Governorship; all of them come from my intellect, my mind and my personality. The drug would probably change them. Even if it could cure my MS, I don’t want to end up as a healthy moron, or a healthy sociopath. You’re an intelligent woman, would you risk it?”

“I can’t. I’m a Breslynn Orphan, one of the quirks of the genetic engineering was a lethal reaction to GC-161.”

“That’s been kept very quiet.”

“There are plenty of people who hate the Orphans, and some of them think that we must all be part of the Evil Empire, even those who fought against the conspiracy. I’d rather they didn’t know how easy it is to kill us.”

“I can see that, I won’t pass it on. But getting back to my original point, would you take GC-161 if you didn’t have that problem?”

“No. But I’m not the one suffering from MS.”

“She shoots, she scores. Okay, I’ll admit to temptation, a hell of a lot of temptation if you must know. But I’ve had a good life and I’m resigned to my fate, all that the stuff would buy me is a few extra years, more likely a faster death, and a good chance that I wouldn’t really be me any more. It just isn’t worth the risk.”

“Okay. Moving on, how many people knew about your condition?”

“Anyone who ever read any story about me or MS in the New Hampshire papers over the last couple of years, I’d imagine. Additionally…” He opened a thick folio of press cuttings. “It’s mentioned in the ‘About the author’ sidebar on my article in _The Economist_ last month, an article about MS in _New Scientist_ three months ago, this article about Abbey in the _New Yorker_ in January. I know it’s mentioned in the Wikipedia article on me. Should I go on?”

“I get the idea. We’re not going to find a suspect that way.”

“Maybe that’s the wrong question,” said Bartlet.

“So what’s the right one?”

“Think about it.”

“Okay...” Sam thought for a moment. “You’re a reasonably prominent public figure with a well-known incurable medical condition. Assuming that’s their definition of an ideal guinea-pig, who else would they try?”

“Exactly.”

* * *

Crossovers this chapter – _The Secret World of Alex Mack, Stargate SG-1, Buffy, The West Wing._


	2. Chapter 2

“You don’t need to see Stephen Hawking,” said Hermione Granger, her voice slightly distorted by the transatlantic call, “The answer is yes; the Post Office intercepted a package that arrived yesterday, Customs are investigating.”

“Where was it sent from?”

“The USA. There’s a postmark in Trenton, New Jersey, it looks like your post office has already determined that the sender’s address doesn’t exist. The customs declaration on the packet says it contains aromatherapy oils. I’d imagine that word will reach the SRI shortly.”

“You’re involved in the investigation?” It was the only way to explain how Hermione had the information at her fingertips.

"Not directly, not yet anyway, but I've made sure that any reports involving GC-161 cross my desk.”

“Why was the package intercepted?”

“He’s voluntarily on the anti-terrorism watch list. Gets a lot of hate mail and weird stuff from flat Earth enthusiasts, religious fundamentalists, that sort of thing.”

“Okay. Can you let me have the vial serial numbers and any forensics you have on the package? And a copy of the letter, of course. We have another incident here, it looks like someone’s trying to push GC-161 as a miracle cure.”

“I’ll get it out to you in the next couple of hours.”

Sam finished the call, thought for moment, then dialled the secure facility in Virginia where Dani Atron, Danielle Atron’s non-evil clone, was still awaiting trial.

*

"Thanks for seeing me," Sam said the following morning.

"Anything I can do to help," said Dani. "My.. other self.. did an immense amount of harm and I want to put things right where I can."

"Okay. I'm trying to trace some five millilitre vials of GC-161, here's a list of the manufacturing dates and vial numbers we have so far."

"Five millilitre samples would have been for animal tests, we mostly did those at the plant." Dani studied the list then shook her head. "There's nothing here that rings any bells."

"What about FDA approval? Did they run their own tests?"

Dani shook her head. “The FDA reviews the manufacturer’s animal tests. Unfortunately it’s possible to game the system and slip something by if nobody rocks the boat. Most of the side-effects are only seen in primates, and they’re too expensive to use until late in the testing process. By the time we knew about the problems we were committed to making GC-161, any change would have cost millions. So I… Danielle… did the minimum of tests on primates, with much lower dosages than we were supposed to use, and fudged the data to make it look like everything was all right. Even then we had some near-misses; we had to dispose of several rabbits that developed the silver morph effect, and there was a chimpanzee that developed telekinesis, it escaped and we were never able to track it down. Nobody’s heard of it since then so it’s probably dead, but for all I know it could still be out there somewhere.”

“Weren’t you trying to market GC-161 globally? Do other countries test food additives the same way?”

“Most countries use the same system, but now that you mention it, I think that’s where these must have come from.” She looked at the list again. “I can’t remember the exact date, but we had to send samples to Canada; not for animal tests, I think they wanted to make sure that they didn’t contain any colourings or flavour enhancers that were banned in Canada. These might have come from that batch, it was around that time.”

“How many would you have sent?”

Dani thought for a moment. “I think fifty, but it might have been a hundred. You’ll have to ask George Mack, I’m fairly sure he handled the request.”

“George Mack?” Sam knew who he was, of course, but knew better than to say so. She took down his contact details.

“What’s this about?” asked Dani. “Between the tests and production trials we must have manufactured several thousand litres of GC-161, what makes these samples so special?”

Sam outlined the problem, finishing; “If you’re right about there being fifty samples then at least twelve people are at risk, possibly many more, even one would be a massive overdose. It just takes someone to discard them where they are found by children or end up in the food chain.”

“Were the two packages sent at the same time?”

“The Hawking package is postmarked a couple of days before Bartlet’s.”

“It takes several days to get a package across to Britain, so they aren’t sending them out one package at a time and waiting to see if there’s any result. Probably most of them have already been delivered. The difference in dates may simply mean that the sender made the rounds of a lot of post offices, or mailed the overseas packets first.”

“What makes you think that?” asked Sam.

“Someone sending a single package is less likely to attract attention than someone posting ten. But you’d want to send them so that they’re all delivered as near as possible to the same time, less chance of someone sounding the alarm in time for the SRI to intercept them in transit.”

“It sounds plausible.”

“It’s what Danielle would have done.” She smiled slightly. “Or rather, she would have had Lars and her other minions do it for her, god forbid she should get her own hands dirty.”

*

“Doctor Finn?” There were two men waiting as Sam checked out of the cell block, both strangers, both wearing smart suits. One was in his fifties, the other probably a little older. Both had briefcases, and slight bulges in their clothing suggested they were armed.

“Yes?”

The younger man produced FBI identification. “I’m Inspector Lewis Erskine with the Federal Anti-Terrorism Task Force, this is Inspector Kevin Brown with the US Postal Inspection Service.”

Brown produced his own ID, an ornate shield with the USPS logo. Noticing that she was puzzled, he said “It’s the oldest federal law enforcement agency, doctor, founded by Ben Franklin himself. We handle crimes involving the postal service. Robberies, illegal shipments, domestic terrorism, that sort of thing.”

Sam checked their ID carefully. “What can I do for you?”

“This way, please,” said Erskine, leading the way to a small conference room. “General O’Neill tells me you’re handling the GC-161 packages. It overlaps with an investigation we’re handling with Interpol.”

Brown glanced at a notebook. “Two days ago a postal worker in Lyon, France suffered… well, I guess you could call it spontaneous human combustion. His right hand started to burn away.”

“When you say burn away…?”

“I mean it literally. The flesh was burning off his hand, water and extinguishers slowed it down but it wouldn’t stop. The first doctor to reach the scene couldn’t stop it and didn’t have any antidote, he had to amputate.”

“I was afraid something like that might happen,” said Sam. “Five millilitres is a massive dose. What’s his condition?”

“Stable. They think it was mostly in the tissues of his arm, between the fire and the amputation most of it didn’t get further into his body, though it must have been a near thing. They had some GC-161 antidote flown in from Paris and they’re keeping him under observation, they think they got it in time.”

“Any idea how he was exposed to it?”

“Apparently one of the sorting machines jammed, he pulled a package out of the machinery to clear it, then realised his hand was wet. It matches closely to the packages sent to Professor Hawking and Governor Bartlet, but it was sent from East Windsor, New Jersey with a customs label that said it was perfume samples. The return address is a vacant lot.”

“Who was it sent to?”

“Doctor Denise Marceau. Lewis has the details.”

“She’s an old lady,” said Erskine, “She and her husband won the Nobel Prize for chemistry fifty-odd years ago, he died in the eighties. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease a couple of years back.”

“That fits in with the other cases,” said Sam. “If she was cured it would probably be a major news story, at least in France.”

“We did get a break with this one,” said Brown. “The Hawking package was sent from a postal shop that didn’t have security cameras, and the Bartlet package was stamped and left in a drop box, but the Marceau package was sent from a Postal Annex that did have a camera.” He opened his briefcase and pulled out a low-resolution photograph, a woman wearing a cycle helmet and sunglasses, half-turned from the camera.

“Can you identify her?”

“Not from this,” said Erskine. “The quality isn’t good, the glasses and helmet conceal a lot of detail, and I’m pretty sure she knew there was a camera there, she never looked at it directly. We’ve tried facial recognition but there are hundreds of near matches, it could be any or none of them. And she paid cash so there’s no credit card trail.”

“Did Atron give you any leads?” asked Brown.

“She thinks it might have come from a batch that was sent to Canada for some sort of quality testing. It turns out to have been handled by George Mack, who was the whistle-blower who revealed the dangers of the chemical. I need to talk to him about it, would you like to sit in on the call?”

“Definitely.” Erskine nodded his agreement.

“Before I call him, I should mention that Doctor Mack is one of the SRI’s scientific advisors, there may be matters he can’t discuss for reasons of operational security.”

“Let’s hope he isn’t behind this,” said Brown, “someone in his position could really do some harm.”

Erskine shook his head. “He’s one of the good guys, helped a lot with the clean up from the Orphan attacks.”

“It really isn’t likely, “ said Sam, “but I’ll bear it in mind.” There was a conferencing phone on the table, and Sam used it to dial Paradise Valley Chemical, and was shortly through to George Mack.

“Okay,” George eventually said after checking some records, “she’s got it partially wrong. It wasn’t the Canadian government that wanted the information; it was the company that was going to distribute GC-161 in Canada. They wanted a licensing deal so that they could make it for themselves, Danielle wanted a global monopoly, so she would only agree to sell them the concentrate for use in their own products. They weren’t happy about that, but eventually they agreed provided we could pass Canadian quality control standards and prove that we were manufacturing the stuff consistently and without any contaminants. So I took two samples a day for four weeks, with some precautions to make sure that they weren’t all taken at the beginning or end of a production run, plus a few from previous weeks, and sent them for analysis; they were still testing them when Danielle and her accomplices were arrested.”

“That sounds like more than fifty vials,” said Erskine.

“Let’s see…” said George, and they heard a keyboard clatter “In all I sent them seventy-six vials. Fifty-six from the daily production runs, twenty from previous weeks.”

“Any idea what happened to them afterwards?”

“I’ll be honest, I forgot to chase it up in all the excitement. They sent an email a few days after the FDA moved in, saying that they’d used twenty-four vials in tests, and asking me to acknowledge return of the rest when the FDA got them back to me. But I can’t find any evidence that they were returned.”

“The FDA was collecting them from Canada?”

“No, Albuquerque. The Canadians had some interest in a pharmaceutical start-up there, to avoid problems with Canadian customs they got them to do the analysis.”

“I’ll need all the details.”

“The company was Grey Matter Technologies, the emails were signed by a Walter White. I’ll email the details and copies of the emails.”

“Can you tell me anything else about them?”

“We only worked with them that one time. I remember that a couple of years later White and his partners shared the Nobel for chemistry. That was nothing to do with GC-161 though, some very nice work on protein folding and synthesis with a lot of medical applications. They’re not a Fortune 500 company yet, but they’re headed that way.”

“Okay, that’s very helpful.”

Sam finished the call, checked her tablet for the email, then turned to the agents. “I think we need to take a closer look at Grey Matter Technologies.”

“If they’re not involved,” said Erskine, “they might be able to tell us how the GC-161 went missing.”

“Works for me,” said Brown.

“I’ll check if the SRI can provide a plane.”

“If you can do that,” said Erskine, “I’ll arrange for our Albuquerque office to assign us a car and driver when we get there.”

* * *

Crossovers this chapter – _Harry Potter, The FBI, Men in Black_ (Kevin Brown is the real name of Agent K in the MiB universe)


	3. Chapter 3

Brown looked around the cabin of the eight-seat Cessna Citation X as he buckled his seatbelt and said “I think I joined the wrong agency. Must be nice to travel like this all the time, usually I end up sitting on crates of mail.”

“The SRI often has to transport small teams a long distance in a hurry,” said Sam. “I think this is the plane they used for the Korean mission; it has all the communications needed for a mobile command post. They have a six-seater that's equipped for medical evacuation.”

“Let’s hope they don’t need this one while we’re in Albuquerque,” said Erskine.

“If that happened it would probably be going to California anyway, we’re headed in the right general direction.”

“What’s in California?” asked Brown, adding “Stupid question. Terawatt, of course.”

“Actually, I was thinking more of Azure Crush, if there was a real emergency they’d probably ask for her help. Terawatt sometimes travels on the plane, but she flies faster without it.” It wasn’t precisely a lie; the SR-71 the SRI used for the most urgent Terawatt missions couldn’t take any other passengers. Erskine raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. Sam suspected he knew more about Terawatt than the SRI had revealed to the public.

Sam waited until the plane reached cruising altitude then got out her laptop and began to review everything she’d found on line about Grey Matter Technologies and Walter White. Someone – probably Terawatt’s hacker Acid Burn, who Sam suspected was Willow Rosenberg – was looking for more information, but she was still waiting on results. Meanwhile she looked for clues, while Erskine and Brown used the Cessna’s satellite links to check their own sources.

“I’ve got something,” Erskine said an hour or so into the flight. “Two years ago Grey Matter gave twenty-eight million dollars to cancer research charities. The news sources for that say that White has incurable lung cancer. Sounds like someone who might be interested in a miracle cure.”

“It may be he’s found one,” said Sam, reviewing the latest information from Acid Burn. “Last year they announced he’s in remission.”

*

“What I’m wondering,” said Sam, “is why a company specialising in advanced molecular crystallography would be running routine quality control tests for a small-time Canadian health food chain. It seems a little odd.”

Walter White scratched his bare scalp and said “The circumstances were a little odd.”

“Especially since Aliments de Santé de Qualité du Québec was a dummy corporation set up by your company.” Sam handed him printouts of the incorporation documents found by Acid Burn.

“Do we need our lawyers present?”

“At this stage we’re just trying to find out what happened to the GC-161,” said Sam. “If you really returned it we’re probably not very interested in the circumstances. But giving us all of the facts now is likely to help you convince us, and avoid a lot of problems further down the line.”

“Okay,” said White’s partner, a jug-eared man named Elliott Schwartz. “Okay, it might have been a little hinky, but I don’t think we actually did anything illegal. We couldn’t figure out a better way to do it.”

“Do what, exactly?” asked Erskine.

“The claims Atron made were extraordinary,” said White, “the only way we could explain them was if they’d stumbled across a new biochemical pathway, a different way to handle some fundamental reactions. If it wasn’t all hype, we wanted to see what it really was, and if it could be used as an intermediary in protein synthesis. And the bitch wouldn’t let anyone have any samples, she wanted a total monopoly. Derivative processes could have been a huge money-maker, for us and for Paradise Valley Chemical, and she wasn’t even looking at them.”

“But we heard that she was looking for foreign distributors,” said Schwartz, “So we invented one for her.”

“It was my idea,” said White. “We set up a shell company, promised a stupidly big percentage for an exclusive license, then once she was nibbling on the bait our front guy told them that if it couldn’t be made in Canada the imported chemicals would have to pass Canadian quality control checks. We were really apologetic about it, even offered to run the tests in an American lab so that the GC-161 wouldn’t leave the country.”

“And she fell for that?” asked Brown.

“They say you can’t cheat an honest man,” said Schwartz, “but Atron was a greedy crook. We asked nicely, said the whole deal depended on it, and she sent us all the samples we could possibly want.”

“And we weren’t really trying to cheat her anyway,” said White. “If we’d found something useful we’d have gone back to her with a concrete proposal.”

“So what happened?” asked Sam.

“It was a mess,” said White. “I ran a couple of dozen tests, no two gave quite the same result. Sometimes there was virtually no effect; sometimes the protein structure was completely wrecked. At first I thought they’d sent faulty samples. Then I checked the purity for real and that was actually pretty good, whats-his-name…”

“George Mack,” said Schwartz.

“Yes, I guess Mack took quality control seriously. They were consistent for concentration and purity. Which meant that there was something unpredictable about GC-161’s effects, maybe something that could affect people that used it. It turned out that tiny changes in concentration and pH in our tests, even trace contaminants from washing the glassware, had a huge impact on the effect, much more than we predicted from theory. The safety implications were horrific. We were still trying to figure out what to do about it when the FDA moved in on them.” He coughed into a paper handkerchief. Sam thought she saw a fleck of red before he tossed it in the trash.

Schwartz nodded. “It was a huge relief. We’d been talking about reporting her to the FDA, but we weren’t sure there was really a problem, we weren’t running animal tests so we couldn’t say that there was definitely an effect on them, and we didn’t exactly have the ethical high ground. When the stuff was banned a few days later we contacted the FDA in California and arranged to have it picked up, and as far as we were concerned that was the end of it.”

“The funny thing is that the whole fiasco probably saved the company,” said White. “Back then it felt like we weren’t getting anywhere, we were both burned out and I was thinking about letting Elliot buy me out and going into teaching. I’m not saying he couldn’t have kept the company going without me, but it wouldn’t have been easy. The GC-161 puzzle got us working as a team again, trying to figure out why the hell it behaved the way it did. And we came up with some wrong answers that ended up pointing in a very good direction. We got our Nobel on the strength of it.”

“Was anyone who worked here exposed to GC-161?” asked Sam.

“I don’t think so. There weren’t any spillages or anything of that sort.”

“That might not be entirely true,” said Schwartz.

“What do you mean?” asked Erskine.

“Back then… well, I hate to say it, but back then Walt seemed to have a hair-trigger temper nearly all the time. We were under a huge amount of pressure trying to make a success of the company, and I’d kinda stolen his girl. There were times when I’m pretty sure he came close to hitting me.”

“As a result of exposure to the drug?”

“No, before that. He mellowed out while we were working on it. At the time I guess we both thought it was just, well, the work bringing us closer together again, but when we started to hear more about what it could do, and the mental effects, years down the line, I began to wonder.”

“You never said anything,” said White.

“I never had any proof. Still don’t.”

“Fuck. Sorry, Doctor Finn. That’s a hell of a thing. You’re serious?”

“If you really want to know,” said Sam, “I can test blood samples. It’ll take a few days.”

“Are you saying that if I took some GC-161 antidote I’d become a violent asshole?”

“Not after this length of time. If it really was responsible for your personality change, by now any effect would be permanent.”

“Thank Christ for that. Okay, sorry Doctor Finn, I really wasn’t expecting any of this.” White coughed heavily, and Sam again saw blood. He noticed her glance, and added “We thought I was in remission. Then I started to cough my lungs out again a month ago. My doctor thinks I have about six months left.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” She guessed that any fuss would be counter-productive. “If you don’t mind, I will take that blood sample, if there was GC-161 exposure that might be one of the causes of your cancer. But first I need to see your experimental logs for the GC-161 tests, and paperwork related to the collection of the samples.”

Schwartz got out some file folders as Brown’s phone began to ring. He went outside to take the call while Sam and Erskine began to look through the files.

“Who was around when it was collected?” asked Sam.

“Both of us, my wife, and whoever was on reception that day” said Schwartz. “Gretchen was our technician back then, she still runs most of the day to day administration of the labs.”

“We’ll need to talk to her too.”

“No problem, she’s in her office.”

Brown came back in, and said “I need to speak to you both privately for a moment.” Sam and Erskine followed him outside. “We have another package, just been reported in. Los Angeles, addressed to a doctor Lawrence Fleinhardt.”

“Does he match the profile?” asked Erskine.

“No details yet. It was only called in an hour ago. I’m surprised we’ve heard about it this fast.”

“I’ll get more details,” said Sam, calling Walter Harriman, who did something at his end. A moment later she was speaking to Acid Burn.

“Lawrence Fleinhard?” said the autotuned voice, “he’s a physicist and astronaut, a few years ago he spent several months on the International Space Station as a payload specialist. He’s one of the strongest candidates for next year’s physics Nobel, for work on cosmology.”

“Any illnesses?”

“Nothing I’m aware of, and his Wikipedia article doesn’t mention anything. If this followed the previous pattern any illness will be mentioned in the letter. I’ll check and let you know as soon as I can.”

“Thanks.” They went back inside as Gretchen Schwartz arrived.

*

“All the paperwork seems in order,” said Sam, handling the forms with gloved hands, “the receipt and paperwork you’ve kept are genuine, so far as I can tell, or at least they’re printed on genuine FDA letterheads. The problem is that the FDA doesn’t have any of the related paperwork at their end. Well done on copying the ID she showed you, but unfortunately that seems to be a good fake.” The picture on the photocopied ID was far from clear, but Sam thought it might be a slightly younger version of the woman from the Postal Annex photo. The ID number didn’t match real FDA identification, and there was no Claire Willis working for them in California. “What can you tell me about her?”

“It’s a long time ago, but I think I remember. Let’s see… brown hair, I’d say about thirty so she’d be about thirty-five now, just a little shorter than me, blue eyes, very attractive, maybe gay…”

“What makes you think that?” asked Erskine.

“She said she wasn’t flying back until the morning, and asked me what I was doing after work. I made it clear I wasn’t interested, but unless I’m confusing her with someone else that’s why I remember her.”

“You’re what… five foot eight or nine?”

“Five-eight.”

“Okay, so maybe she’d be about five-seven.”

“Sounds about right.”

“She used the name Claire Willis,” said Erskine, “we may have a perp who likes crime novels.” At their blank looks he added “Claire Willis is the name used by the girlfriend of the main character in novels by Richard Stark.”

“What exactly is this about?” asked Gretchen. “Why the sudden urgency to find something that went missing five years ago?”

“You never did say,” said White.

“Some of the vials have recently been found under suspicious circumstances,” said Sam, “now we want to know who’s distributing them.” Erskine put the forms into an evidence bag.

“I wish we could be more help,” said Schwartz, “but we were just pleased to get rid of the stuff. I don’t think any of us thought she might be a fake.”

“Thank you,” said Sam, “I think that’s it for the moment, apart from the blood samples.”

“And we’ll need your fingerprints for comparison with any we find on the papers,” said Erskine, producing a pad and ink from his briefcase.

“Are there likely to be any problems for us?” asked White.

“We’ll have to make our reports,” said Erskine, “but in view of your cooperation and the lack of any complaint from Paradise Valley Chemical, and assuming everything checks out, I doubt we’ll be taking any action.”

*

“The letter with the GC-161 suggested it might cure Fleinhardt’s osteoporosis,” Acid Burn said as they were headed back to the airport.

“Osteoporosis?” asked Sam. “How old is he?”

“Sixty, which seems a little young if what online sources say about the condition is right. But according to the FBI reports Fleinhardt doesn’t have osteoporosis at all.”

“That’s odd. How could someone get that idea?”

“He was in prolonged free fall, doesn’t that damage bones?”

“It does, but it’s usually a temporary condition. When was he in space?”

“Six years ago.”

“He might have presented as possibly suffering from osteoporosis for a year or two after that, if someone had reason to look his bones.”

“The Los Angeles Bureau is handling the case,” said Erskine, busy with his own phone, “the Special Agent in charge actually knows Fleinhardt, he’s a family friend. I’ll ask if there was any incident that might give someone the idea he has osteoporosis.”

“The package was left in a drop box in Jamesburg, New Jersey” said Brown, who was working on an iPad. “All of the mail drops were in a fairly small geographical area. Given that the picture shows her wearing a cycle helmet, I’m guessing she lives somewhere in the area and she’s cycling to the drop-offs.”

“It sounds plausible,” said Erskine. “A bicycle’s a lot harder to trace than a car. Whoever this is, she probably isn’t stupid.” He turned his attention back to his phone and began to talk to someone called Don. A minute later he said “Fleinhardt,” and handed the phone to Sam.

“Doctor Fleinhardt, I’m Doctor Samantha Finn, temporarily attached to the Department of Homeland Security, SRI section. I’m one of several people investigating these packages, I was hoping you could help me with that.”

“Sure. You said packages; who else were they sent to?”

“So far we’re aware of two other scientists and an economist. There could be more. Doctor Fleinhardt, who might be under the impression that you suffer from osteoporosis?”

Fleinhardt ignored the question. “Was Hawking one of the scientists?”

Sam sighed slightly. “Yes, doctor.”

“I’d hate anyone to think I was more deserving than him. Everyone else was seriously ill?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. That certainly doesn’t apply to me. I’m in good health, which is why it seemed odd that someone would send me an alleged medicine.”

“That’s what I’m calling about. Could anything have happened that would give anyone the impression that you were suffering from osteoporosis?”

“Recently?”

“Probably, but I can’t rule out an earlier incident. Perhaps soon after you returned from the International Space Station, when there might have been some temporary brittleness. Has something occurred to you?”

“Yes. February the following year I slipped on an icy path and broke my ankle. It wasn’t particularly serious, I was only in hospital for a few days, but they did have to put in a couple of pins. At first it felt like I was continually being tested for one thing and another without much in the way of explanation, there must have been a dozen interns involved. Eventually someone explained that they were concerned that I might have brittle bones, I pointed out the most probable cause, and that was the end of it.”

“If ice was involved, I’m guessing that wasn’t in Los Angeles.” 

“Princeton. I was there for a conference.”

“And where were you treated?”

“Princeton Plainsboro Hospital.”

“Who was in charge of your treatment?”

“I’m not entirely sure. It all seemed rather chaotic.”

“Did anyone in particular stand out?”

“The doctor who told me what the problem was. He seemed very cynical, said that if any of them had asked the right questions I might have started physiotherapy a day earlier instead of taking needless tests. A tall man, maybe six two or three, perhaps fifty years old, he walked with a stick and seemed to be more interested in watching soap operas on my TV than in what I was saying.”

Sam had a feeling she knew where this was going. “Did he give a name?”

“I’m trying to remember… Holmes, Hume, something like that?”

“House?”

“Yes, that sounds right, how did you know?”

“I thought I recognised your description. Thank you, that’s very helpful. I’d be grateful if you could send me any case notes that were sent to you or your physician. The exact date and the names of the doctors involved, that might help to narrow down who might have thought you were suffering from osteoporosis. The FBI can forward them to me.”

“Of course, I’ll call my doctor. If there’s nothing else, I have a seminar this afternoon, I should really get back to the college.”

“Thank you, I think that’s all we need for now.” She gave the phone back to Erskine and started to consider options.

* * *

Crossovers this chapter – _Breaking Bad, Numb3rs, House M.D._


	4. Chapter 4

“…so that’s the situation,” Sam said several hours later. “All of the mailing points so far were within a few miles of Princeton Plainsboro hospital, I think there’s definitely a connection. What I don’t have is anything to explain how someone there would have been able to intercept the samples.”

“You need a connection between someone at the hospital and the Paradise Valley operation,” said Jack O’Neill.

“Acid Burn is looking into it. So far there’s no evidence that anyone working at the hospital has any connection to Paradise Valley Chemicals or Grey Matter Technologies, so it’s most likely related to the FDA crackdown. The problem is that any big hospital probably has a lot of staff with connections to the FDA, winnowing out the chaff will be difficult.”

“We’ve determined that all of the letters we’ve seen so far were printed by a Lexmark laser printer, one that uses their E260 toner cartridges,” said Erskine. “Unfortunately there are lots of them around, and we can’t identify the exact printer model. The font is Geneva, that’s one of the oldest Apple typefaces. That may mean an Apple computer, but there are clone fonts for other systems. Nobody’s found any useful fingerprints on the vials, letters or inner packaging, whoever sent them wore surgical gloves. We have a few epithelial cells from inside the boxes; we should have the forensics from them in four or five days. The odds are well against them being in the system, most people aren’t, but they might help to prove things once we have a suspect.”

“Fortunately the fake paperwork from the FDA was printed by a color laser,” said Brown, “and Grey Matter Technologies kept the originals, not copies.”

“Why is that important?” asked Sam.

Jack grinned. “Fun technological fact; Big Brother is watching your printer.” 

“Because color lasers can be used for forgery,” said Erskine, “the manufacturers agreed to make them traceable. Nearly all color lasers and laser-based color photocopiers print a unique pattern of tiny dots on every page, a process called printer steganography. You can use them to determine the model and serial number of the printer, and the date the page was printed. Maybe trace it back to the owner of the printer if they registered the warranty.”

“We should hear back on that and on fingerprints by the morning,” said Brown, “Normally it takes a couple of days but there’s a guy in the Secret Service labs that owes me some favours, he’s going to expedite it.”

“That’s something that might be helpful,” said Sam, “but I think that we’ll probably end up needing to take a closer look at the hospital. The snag is that Greg House was the diagnostician when Fleinhardt was treated. He’s brilliant but he’s a total son of a bitch, he won’t be easy to work with. One thing, he knew that Fleinhardt didn’t have osteoporosis, so we can probably rule him out as a suspect.”

“You know him?” asked Jack.

“When I joined the Peace Corps they sent a bunch of new recruits to Princeton Plainsboro for a crash course on field diagnosis. House was one of the instructors. Somehow he knew I’d worked as a fashion model to pay my way through med school, he called me ‘Doctor Hooters’ and kept asking which issues of Hustler he should bring in for me to sign.”

“He singled you out for special attention?”

“No, he was just as bad to everyone else. I think it was his way of seeing how we worked under pressure.”

“Okay,” said Jack, “it sounds like you’ve got as much done as you can for tonight. Let’s leave it there and talk again when we have more information, and hope that if there are more packages out there nobody is fool enough to drink the Kool-Aid.”

*

_Jason was old and tired, his hands often shaky, but his mind was still sharp. He leafed through the latest script, dictating corrections and extra dialogue, trying to make it more like the adventures of his youth and strip out Hollywood-inspired stupidity. If they were fool enough to give him script approval, they could bloody well live with the consequences._

_One of the studio minions came in with the morning mail, which looked like the usual mix of fan letters and script changes. A padded envelope caught his eye, and he switched off the dictation machine, fumbled with a letter opener and eventually got it open. Inside were five small vials, wrapped in bubble-wrap, and a letter. He read it through, snorted, then thought for a minute. What did he have to lose? At the worst his life was insured, his family probably wouldn’t be too sad to see him go. At best it might be a cure. Whatever happened, it needed to be an accident; if he drank the stuff deliberately and died someone could say it was suicide, and that would never do. Fortunately his condition could explain almost anything._

_He carefully positioned two of the vials in his hand then buzzed for his assistant. As she came in he started to shake his hands and said “Call my doctor. I think I’m having another stroke.” He deliberately swung his hand down onto the desk, and felt glass break in his hand, and a strange tingling sensation…_

_He was already unconscious when his secretary started screaming._

*

They met in the SRI’s conference room the following morning.

“We have some partial fingerprints on the Grey Matter paperwork that don’t match White, Schwartz or his wife,” said Brown. “Not much use on their own, there aren’t enough data points to run a search, but we can check them against any suspects that come up.”

“What about the printer?” asked Sam.

“That’s where it gets interesting. They were printed by a Xerox Phaser 6100DN, a high-volume network printer. My guy traced it to a batch of twenty sold to the FDA regional office in California in 2006. Fortunately they keep good records, it turns out that that particular printer was installed aboard one of their mobile control centers. Anyone care to guess where it was on the date those forms were printed?”

“Paradise Valley?” asked Erskine.

“Bingo!”

“Okay,” said Sam, speed-dialling Acid Burn. “We need FDA personnel who were assigned to the Paradise Valley operation and have links to Princeton Plainsboro Hospital or the Princeton area. Any candidates?”

“That’s not going to help much on its own,” said the hacker, “the FDA runs several training courses a month at their New Jersey headquarters, which isn’t that far from Princeton. About a third of the personnel trained there at one time or another.”

“Okay, can you narrow down the personnel by age, sex, and so forth?”

“Sure.”

“Female, height about five-seven, that’s around a hundred and seventy centimetres, dark brown hair, blue eyes, she’d have been about thirty. Any possibilities?”

There was a short delay then Acid Burn said “Three, only one of them still an FDA employee. Shirley Phillips, no connection to Princeton I can find. She’s currently based on Guam and… just a second… hasn’t taken any time off work in the last three weeks, so probably didn’t send the packages. Doesn’t look much like your suspect either, a much squarer face.”

“What about the other two?”

“Marilyn Doyle, let’s see, quit to work in the private sector, ended up… Oh. Ended up working for Umbrella Corporation, believed to have died in Davenport.”

“Damn. Any match to the photos we have?”

“Not that I can tell, and facial recognition software says no. But I can’t rule it out completely, there wasn’t much left of the bodies.”

After a short pause she continued. “Okay, the last one is… well, this is interesting. Cameron Foreman, an office temp with a background in the pharmaceutical industry. We have her picture from a site pass that was issued to her; she matches the pictures from the fake FDA pass and the security camera. I’m sending it to your laptop. She started there three days after the FDA went in, worked there for five days, which overlaps the date Grey Matter contacted the FDA, then called in with a vaguely described family emergency and never came back. At some point after that they discovered that her address was phony and her references were bogus. Then the LA Tribune published a story about the FDA investigation which implied some insider knowledge, and everyone jumped to the conclusion that she was actually a reporter. Nobody seems to have pursued it after that. So far I can’t find any Cameron Foreman who matches her photo.”

“I don’t think you will,” said Sam. “There was a Doctor Foreman at Princeton Plainsboro when I trained there, he’s now their Dean of Medicine. I think there was a Doctor Cameron too, but if I’m right she was a blonde, and I don’t think she looked much like our mystery woman.”

“Let me check that.” There was another pause. “Okay, both of those check out. Doctor Eric Foreman is Dean of Medicine, I’m pretty sure he couldn’t disguise himself as the mystery woman, what with being black and bald and male and everything. Doctor Allison Cameron was senior emergency room attending physician until last year. She quit after she divorced her husband, who still works there. Blonde, her face isn’t a match; also she’s a little shorter. Currently working in Chicago, I’ll ask our contacts out there to check her out but I don’t think we’ll find anything useful.”

“Can you find out how the LA Tribune got the story?” asked Brown.

“That may take a while, it doesn’t look like much of their network is accessible from the outside.”

“Don’t push it,” said Erskine, “I’ll check with Don Eppes in LA, he’ll know someone who has access.”

“Just a second.” There was a long pause. “One of my searches just tripped. There’s been another incident.”

“Where?” asked Sam.

“New York. A British author called Jason King, the guy who wrote the Mark Caine spy novels and movies in the sixties and seventies. He’s script consultant on the mini-series Netflix are making there. He has Parkinson’s disease and a history of strokes. His secretary said he started to have an attack as he was opening the package and broke one of the vials in his hand.”

“What happened?”

“He turned into a puddle of silver goo. Fortunately someone called 911 and told them how the bottles were labelled. The paramedics poured some GC-161 antidote on him, at the moment he’s back together and they’ve got him on life support.”

“Doesn’t sound like it cured him,” said Erskine. “We need to get this over. I’ll have a team waiting for us in Princeton.”

“I’ll let General O’Neill know,” said Acid Burn.

“I’ve had it with these idiots,” said Brown.

“I think we all have,” said Sam.

* * *

Crossovers this chapter – _House M.D., Jason King_


	5. Chapter 5

As they walked to House’s office Sam said “I’d better talk to him alone first. He doesn’t react well to authority.” She checked that the Bluetooth earphone she was wearing was live and properly linked to her phone. “You can listen in, I'll hear if you have any suggestions.”

“If he’s mixed up in this that might be a bad idea,” said Erskine.

“I’m pretty sure I’m stronger and faster than him,” said Sam, “and I’ve got antidote if I need it. And I’ll be astonished if he’s involved, not knowingly anyway.”

“Okay.”

Sam left them in a waiting area near the office. She went on alone, tapped on the door, and ignored his shout of “Go away!”

“House. Nice to see you’re still your charming self.”

Greg House was sitting with his feet propped on his desk and a PSP in his hands, playing Angry Birds. He looked up, grinned at her, and said “Doctor Hooters! How’s Hustler? Done a photo-shoot with Azure Crush yet?”

“Vogue, and no. I see old age hasn’t affected your memory. Or your wishful thinking.”

“Harsh.”

“Harsh but fair.”

“Granted. So how’s life in the Peace Corps?”

“I’m with Doctors Without Borders now. Let’s see… met someone and got married, went to Africa, found out I was a genetically modified organism created by an evil conspiracy, got shot by them when I wouldn’t join them, that sort of thing. How about you?”

“Well, that explains a lot. I always wondered how you looked so good with the hours they had you working on that course, but I never thought of that one.” He spun his chair around, grabbed his cane, and stood. There was a coffee machine on a side table, and he poured himself a cup. “Want some?”

“Thanks. It surprised me too.” She poured a cup, tasted it, grimaced and put it down. “You should try cleaning the pot occasionally.”

“So where were you shot? The ass?”

“Thigh, arm and chest. The chest wound was a through and through; fortunately it missed my lungs, but it gave me a pneumothorax so they’re not letting me back in the field for another few months.”

“Want to show me?”

“You’re not my doctor, House, and I don’t need a second opinion. Especially if it involves you staring at me half-naked.”

“Looking for some part-time work to fill in?”

“I’ve got some. Which is why I’m here.”

“Strippergram?” he said hopefully.

“In your dreams. I need your help.”

“Medical help?”

“More or less. You might want to sit down, this will take a while to explain.” She moved to one of the chairs.

“This ought to be good.” House sat back behind his desk and leaned back again.

“Ever hear of GC-161?”

“Geec? Sure, the stuff that’s supposed to give you superpowers.”

“Someone’s sending it to people with incurable illnesses, with the suggestion that it might change their condition.” She gave him a copy of the letter sent to Bartlet, with the name and other identifying details blacked out. “There have been five of these so far, each accompanied by enough GC-161 to affect dozens of people.”

“Anyone try it?”

“So far no, not deliberately. But we have two people seriously injured. A postal worker who lost a hand, and a recipient who broke a vial accidentally and ended up in a coma.”

“So you want me to play detective?”

“We know who’s doing it; we need your help to find her.” She put three pictures on his desk; the security camera shot, the faked FDA ID, and the pass issued during the Paradise Valley operation. “We’re reasonably sure that the person doing this has worked at this hospital. One of the letters made some wrong assumptions about a patient’s condition based on information that would have only been known to a few people here. Say someone who participated in the early stages of a patient’s diagnosis but wasn’t present when you figured out what was really going on.”

“When you say ‘we’ who exactly do you mean?”

“Homeland Security.”

“Someone who looks like her shouldn’t be hard to find.”

“It would help considerably if you could point us in the right direction.”

“How exactly would you expect me to do that?”

“By giving me Doctor Hadley’s address and contact details. That’s who it is, of course, Doctor Remy Hadley, a former member of your team.” She put a fourth photograph on the table, this one from Princeton Plainsboro’s web site. “She’s done a very good job of dropping out of sight since she resigned.”

Sam’s phone rang, and she listened to Acid Burn for a few seconds then ended the call. “Sorry about that. As I was saying, we know that this is Doctor Remy Hadley, one of your former colleagues, and we know that she stole more than fifty vials of GC-161. So far we’ve accounted for twenty, we urgently need to find the rest. I was going to ask you why she might be doing this, but a contact just told me about her brother. She wasn’t able to help him; is she trying to make up for it?”

“I really can’t answer that.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“What difference does it make?”

 _“Won’t_ would imply that you know but won’t tell me for some reason. Maybe you don’t like me, or don’t want to get Doctor Hadley into trouble. _Can’t_ implies that you don’t know, but might mean that you’re prevented from telling me for some other reason. Mind control, or selective amnesia. Or professional ethics, of course. Is Doctor Hadley your patient?”

“If she was I couldn’t answer that.”

“Okay… let’s try something else then. What’s her current address? That isn’t something that falls under patient confidentiality.” House didn’t reply. “The clock’s ticking, House. We’re got one of the best hackers in the world looking for her; it’s probably only a matter of hours before we find her. But the sooner we do, the less chance there is that she’ll be facing murder charges.”

“I may – and I stress may – know who she’s living with, which might give you an address. But what’s in it for me?”

“Seriously?”

“As you said, the clock is ticking.”

“What do you want, House?”

“Did your hacker tell you about my current legal situation?”

“I know that you’re currently on parole.”

“Was. I did a couple of stupid things, in a day or two I’ll be going back to prison to serve out the rest of my sentence. You remember James Wilson?”

“Head of Oncology?”

“That’s right. Now the asshole has cancer, radiation therapy didn’t work, and he’s refusing to take chemo to prolong his life. I want to be there for him, but he’ll probably be dead by the time I get out of prison.”

“How long has he got?”

“About six months.”

“Let me check with some colleagues.” She got out her iPhone and said “Would you come in, please.” There was an awkward pause, then a knock on the door, and Erskine and Brown came in. “Inspector Erskine, FBI Federal Anti-Terrorism Task Force, and Inspector Brown, US Postal Inspection Service.”

“You’re working with the mail man?” House said incredulously.

“There are four institutions that you really do not want to annoy,” said Brown. “The first is Internal Revenue, because you don’t want to spend the rest of your life being audited. The second is the Secret Service, because they are a humorless bunch of assholes that can and will interpret almost anything you say or do as a threat to the President. And the third is USPS, because we’ll start off by making sure that your tax forms never reach Internal Revenue and work up from there, and the laws governing our responsibilities are so fucking complicated that you will never be able to stop us.”

“What’s the fourth?” asked House.

“Disney. Nobody in their right mind messes with the Mouse.”

House grinned. “What about the FBI?”

Deadpan, Brown said “Bunch of pussies.”

“What my colleague is trying to say,” said Erskine, “is that we’re the people who actually have experience dealing with this sort of problem. I’m pretty sure we can help, especially if you help us find Doctor Hadley before things get any more serious. You may have to go back to jail for a week or two, but we should be able to get you out pretty quickly if we have you listed as an FBI and Homeland Security consultant.”

“If you’re actually interested the SRI could probably use more medical help occasionally,” said Sam. “They’ve had some bizarre cases over the last couple of years. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to run diagnostics on someone like Klar.”

“What sort of guarantee do I have?”

“I can’t make any promises, but we’ll do our best to help. If all else fails I’m pretty sure that Doctor Finn can get her husband to stand up in court for you.”

“And?”

“He won the Medal of Honor a while ago; judges like that sort of thing.”

“OK… provided you’ll promise not to hurt Hadley.”

“We’ll do our best,” said Sam. Brown and Erskine nodded their agreement.

“Okay… Her girlfriend’s name is Marissa Cooper. They live somewhere in Newport Beach, California, I don’t have the address or phone number, but they were in Princeton a few days ago and they may still be around. I do have her email address, but it’s Gmail so that doesn’t tell you where to find her.” He gave her the details.

“Okay.”

“When you talk to her, ask her why she didn’t send some Geec to me. If I had superpowers it’d be awesome.” 

“You aren’t dying, and she apparently has a little common sense.”

As soon as they were out of the office, Sam spoke to Acid Burn. “Can you find me James Wilson’s address? He’s a prime target for her mail shot. And monitor House’s communications, make sure that he doesn’t tip Hadley off.”

“Already on it. So far there’s nothing. I’ve found Marissa Cooper’s address but there’s been no utilities usage there for the last ten days, I’m guessing nobody’s home.”

“Can you trace them?”

“Working on it.”

“I’ve arranged for agents to tail House if he leaves the building,” said Erskine, pocketing his phone. “Wouldn’t he realise that his friend might be targeted?”

“He wants Doctor Wilson cured, he wouldn’t do anything to stop that.”

* * *

Crossovers this chapter – _House M.D._ , coming up _The O.C._


	6. Chapter 6

James Wilson looked half asleep when he answered the door of his apartment, and Sam guessed that he hadn’t shaved in several days.

“Doctor Wilson, I’m Doctor Samantha Finn. I’m working with Homeland Security. My colleagues are Inspector Erskine, FBI Federal Anti-Terrorism Task Force, and Inspector Brown, US Postal Inspection Service.” She showed him her ID, Brown and Erskine showed their badges.

“Didn’t you train at the hospital a few years ago? I thought you were with the Peace Corps.”

“It’s Doctors Without Borders these days, but I was injured recently, I’m taking a break from that until I’m fully recovered. You have a good memory.”

“I have a friend who wouldn’t shut up about the model he was training, it stuck in my mind.”

“House. Yes, he was fairly vocal at the time.”

“What’s this about?”

“Have you received a package in the last few days? Several vials of a chemical called GC-161 with a note suggesting it might help you?”

“You’d better come in.” He led them into a comfortable-looking lounge. There was a familiar-looking package opened on the coffee table. Three of the vials contained a familiar amber liquid, the fourth was empty.

“You drank one?”

“They were in my mail box when I checked it last night. I have stage two thymoma, it’s not like I have a lot to lose.”

“What time did you take it?”

“About nine last night.”

“Your body mass is around eighty kilos?”

“Seventy-five. I’ve lost some weight with the cancer, my clothes are a little loose.”

“You took a huge dose of the pure solution, not the dilute version that’s on the black market. I don’t think the antidote will do much good at this stage; any effects will probably be permanent. Have you noticed anything? Nausea, vomiting, skin irritation, telekinesis, lightning, spontaneous combustion, turning into a silvery morph?”

“House would have a lot of fun with that check list. No, none of those so far, not exactly. Just… yesterday I was left handed, today I seem to be ambidextrous. I think my reflexes may be a little faster too. That’s about it.”

“And your medical condition?”

“I don’t feel any different. My appetite’s better, I’m guessing that’s a side effect. Isn’t it supposed to speed metabolism? Unfortunately I still have nausea from the cancer, so eating enough will probably be a chore.”

“I’d suggest giving it a few days, then visit your doctor for a full work-up and see if anything’s changed. I’ll leave you some antidote, if any undesirable symptoms appear take the full bottle, or get someone to pour it on you, and get medical help as quickly as you can. You’d better warn your doctor today, in case things change rapidly.”

“What are the odds?” asked Wilson.

“I’ll be honest; we’ve little reason to believe that it helps with cancer, if anything it’s a carcinogen in its own right. But the effects seem to be very variable, you might be lucky.”

“We’ll need to take the rest,” said Erskine, putting on gloves and carefully packing the package and its contents into evidence bags.

“Sure. I get that it’s Russian roulette, I think one pull of the trigger is enough.”

“Anything new in the letter?” asked Brown.

“Pretty much as before,” said Erskine.

“How many have there been?” asked Wilson.

“Six so far,” said Sam.

“Any casualties?”

“One postal worker lost his hand, one of the recipients is critically ill.”

“I’m sorry, I should have called the police last night.”

“It probably wouldn’t make much difference. We know who’s doing it, I doubt it would help us get any closer.”

“Actually this might,” said Brown, looking at the package through the evidence bag. “Let me check something.” He opened an app on his iPad, waited while it accessed the USPS database, then said “This was sent from the US Post Office at 213 Carnegie Center, Princeton, at 11.48 AM on Monday. I’ve been there before, the center and its grounds have complete security coverage. Get your hacker to check it out and see if we can find anything useful.”

Sam relayed the information. While she was waiting she asked Wilson “Who actually knew about your cancer?”

“Until recently just me and my oncologist. A few weeks ago I made the mistake of telling House, then things didn’t go well with the radiotherapy. He tried to convince me to commit to palliative treatment, all that would do is dull my mind and prolong the agony. House pulled out all the stops to try to persuade me, even dragged back old staff and patients. It was a ridiculous circus.”

“The timing seems right,” said Erskine. “House tells a lot of people, our perp is one of them. Maybe she’s been thinking of trying something like this for a while, and that’s the trigger. She probably had a list of suitable patients, when she hears you’re ill she adds you and starts sending out the packages once she’s back in Princeton.”

“Who are we talking about here?” asked Wilson.

“We can’t tell you that, not until we’ve made an arrest.”

“I think we’d better,” said Sam. “Apart from anything else, he might know something useful.”

“Okay. Doctor Wilson, this needs to be kept on the QT for the moment, lives may depend on it.”

“Okay.”

“We’re looking for Doctor Remy Hadley,” said Sam. “We’ve evidence that she stole a batch of GC-161 vials several years ago, and we have proof that she’s been sending these packages. What we don’t have right now is her current location.”

“Remy Hadley? Why in god’s name would she be doing this?”

“Her family has a history of Huntingdon’s Chorea. Her mother was institutionalized and eventually died of it; her brother was suffering from it at the time of his death. I think that she’s also affected; one of the side effects is poor decision-making.”

“I know that it was a possibility,” said Wilson.

“Were you aware that eighteen months ago she served prison time for over-prescribing drugs to her brother?” said Erskine. “Plea-bargained from a murder charge because they couldn’t prove she actually killed him?”

“No… House told everyone she’d been in rehab.”

“I think she originally stole the GC-161 to treat her brother, but couldn’t get it to work,” said Sam. “Some people simply seem to be immune, he may have been one of them. By the time she assisted his suicide she knew that she was also carrying the gene, by the time she quit the hospital I’d imagine her judgement was already impaired. I’m not sure why she decided on her current plan, but it seems plausible that she wanted to attract attention to the possibility of using the drug medically.”

“That makes a disturbing amount of sense,” said Wilson. “What can I do to help?”

“Do you have any contact details? Phone, email, an address?”

“Yes, of course. She’s currently living in California…” He got out an address book and gave them the address and contact details they already had.

“Nothing else? Say a mobile phone?”

“Sorry, yes. I talked to her when House staged his intervention, she entered her number into my cell but made me swear I’d never give it to House.”

“Your cell, please,” said Erskine.

Wilson gave it to him. “I didn’t put her name into the phone in case House got hold of it, it’s speed dial #13.”

Sam read it to Acid Burn.

“That’s odd,” Acid Burn said a moment later, “that phone’s still in the same cell as the post office. Let’s see… okay, that’s got the GPS live. Hmm… it’s somewhere in the Hyatt Regency Hotel at Carnegie Center. Well, we knew they were probably staying somewhere in the area. Checking their records… yes, Marissa Cooper is checked in there. She’s still booked into suite 5214, and it looks like she’s charged two breakfasts to the room every morning. Just one today though.”

“On it,” said Erskine. “Let’s get over there.”

*

Marissa Cooper was in her room when they arrived; a gorgeous tanned blonde with the sort of figure that usually implied expensive cosmetic surgery. She was dressed casually and seemed to have been crying.

“I haven’t seen Remy since she stormed out last night,” she said when they’d introduced themselves and explained what they wanted, “What’s this about? Is she okay?”

“Have you noticed anything at all odd about her behaviour lately?”

“She isn’t well. I’ve known pretty much since I met her that she has an inherited condition that sometimes makes her really shaky, that she’d die young. She quit her job because she didn’t trust herself to be responsible for patients any more. Then a couple of weeks ago she heard that one of the doctors at her old hospital was ill and refusing treatment, she wanted to come here and see if she could help him at all. That was okay, I came along because I thought she’d need someone to lean on, but then she started getting really secretive about something.”

“Any idea what?”

“The day after we got here she went out for a few hours, came back with some little packages, and started mailing them out, a couple a day. I was worried it was drugs, but she swore it was a medical thing, that she wanted to help people. The weird part was that the addresses were all over the place. There was one in Los Angeles, another San Francisco, you’d think it would have been faster to send them from Newport Beach. Another was that scientist who was on Star Trek.”

“Spock?”

“No, the real one, Stephen Hawking. The others were people I’d mostly never heard of.”

“Could you give us a list?” asked Brown.

“How much trouble is Remy in?”

“If we can catch up with her quickly and intercept the rest of the packages it might not be too bad,” said Sam. “But potentially it could get very bad indeed. You can help us minimise the damage.”

“Okay.” She gave them eight names and addresses. Six they already had, the others were new to them; Jesse Custer, who was soon identified as a televangelist who had recently caused a scandal by admitting that he had AIDS, and former Police Chief Robert T. Ironside of San Francisco, a paraplegic since the 1960s. Acid Burn began to trace their current locations.

“You have a very good memory,” said Sam, putting pieces together in her mind; Marissa’s looks and physique, her near-photographic memory, Remy Hadley’s behaviour and what she could only describe as a gut feeling. “Marissa, are you a Breslynn Orphan?”

* * *

Crossovers this chapter – _House M.D., The O.C._. Mentioned _Preacher, Ironside._


	7. Chapter 7

Marissa nodded. “I didn’t know I was adopted when I was a kid, but I started to put things together in high school, and freaked out because my parents never told me. I started drinking and using, I was probably wasted more often than I was sober. Then I was in a really bad car crash, they had to remove my spleen and I spent a month in traction, and that pretty much sobered me up. Aced my SATs, went to college, set up my own business and did pretty well. But until I got the Orphan email I didn’t realise I was that… different.”

“Did they try to recruit you?”

“When the papers and TV news picked up on the Orphan thing I put two and two together and decided it would be smart to get lost until it blew over. So I sold up my business as fast as I could, and looked around for a way to drop out of sight for a while. That’s when I met Remy; she and some people I knew were sailing a yacht to the Bahamas, I chipped in some money for supplies and joined the ship. We stayed out there for a few months, kinda drifted from one house party to another hoping that the islands wouldn’t be nuked or attacked by giant hentai tentacle monsters or something. By the time we got back to Newport Beach we were in love, the Evil Empire was on the ropes, and I never heard from the assholes again. And now it’s come between me and Remy.” She began to sob.

“What happened?”

“I’d never told her about me. There never seemed to be a right time, and it would have been like saying I was super-healthy when she was slowly dying. But there was something on the TV about the Orphans last night and she started to say stupid things, how she would have liked to have had her genes edited. I told her she was out of her mind and it slipped out. Fifteen minutes later she was gone.”

“I think I know why she left,” said Sam. “The packages she’s been sending contain a chemical which might have some medicinal effect for most people, but it’s lethally toxic for Orphans. She would have known that, it’s mentioned in the FDA advisory information for hospitals. She may have been worried she was carrying traces that would hurt you.”

“Can you think where she might have gone?” asked Erskine

“She knows plenty of people in the area, I guess. She was riding around a lot; her coordination isn’t always good, but she seemed to be okay on her bike.”

“She brought a bicycle with her from California?”

“No, she brought it back with her the same time she got the packages.”

Erskine rubbed his chin. “Did Doctor Hadley bring much with her when she moved in with you.”

“Not really. A couple of suitcases, maybe. Mostly clothing, some medical books and crime novels.”

“She sold her apartment when she left Princeton. Did she say anything about putting the contents in storage?”

“I don’t think… wait, she picked up a ton of mail when we got back from the Bahamas, I think I remember a bill. Um… Princeton Self Storage, that was it.”

“About six miles from your current location,” said Acid Burn. “Trying to access their database… yeah, there’s a locker rented in the name of R. Hadley, still current.”

“How was she paying?” asked Erskine.

“Looks like cash.”

“Sounds like she didn’t want anyone tracing the locker from her payments,” said Brown. “That’s probably where she was keeping the drug.”

“Did she have any cash with her when she went out?” asked Erskine. “Credit cards? Keys?”

“I guess,” said Marissa. “Though she went out so fast she left her phone behind. I tried to call her and it rang in the bedroom. She had everything else in her fanny-pack, I think.”

“About her personal possessions. Did you ever notice if she carried any keys? Apart from your home, of course.”

“I think so…” She thought for a moment. “Four for our house, car keys but that’s in California, and a couple of others she kept on the same ring. One was a big padlock key, the other was small.”

“Probably the storage locker and maybe a bicycle lock, or a container inside the locker,” said Brown.

“I think we need to get over to that locker,” said Sam.

“Can I come with you?” asked Marissa.

“Better not,” said Erskine. “She might come back here ten minutes after we leave, if she does it would be best if you’re here. Give me your phone number, I’ll send an agent up to maintain radio contact. We’ll let you know if there’s any news.”

*

The sun was setting as they drove to the storage facility. “If Marissa’s telling the truth Hadley’s sent out thirty-two vials,” said Sam, “that leaves twenty. It’s possible she’s planning to send more, but I’m guessing she used a lot on her brother. If I’m right to think she was worried about hurting Marissa, it’s possible that she’s taken some recently. Or broken a vial accidentally, of course.”

“Good news on the last two packages,” said Acid Burn. “If the names you have are right, neither can have been delivered yet. Jesse Custer has been hiding out from his congregation since he came out as having AIDS, and his office guys quit when the pay checks stopped coming in. His last couple of weeks of mail are still in sacks at the sorting office, nobody collected them. Inspector Brown, your guys are waiting on a warrant to look through the bags for the vials. Robert Ironside isn’t hiding, but although he’s nearly a hundred and paraplegic he’s still pretty active; he’s in Singapore on a lecture tour, all of his mail is waiting in a post office box until he gets back. General O’Neill’s got someone from the US Embassy arranging to get his permission to open it.”

“Anything more on the storage facility?” asked Erskine. 

“Their billing system was easy but they’ve actually got things nailed down pretty well on the site security side, I’m just getting into the camera feeds. Okay… she’s got unit two two zero four, that’s going to be covered by cameras… um… eleven and twelve. Guys, the shutter is open but I can’t see more than a foot or so inside, the camera angles are wrong. I’m sending plans of the place to your computers.”

Erskine leaned forward and spoke to the driver, who switched on flashing lights and sirens and took the SUV up to ninety.

“By the way,” said Acid Burn, “so far Doctor House has drafted three emails to Doctor Hadley but deleted all of them without sending them. I think he’s trying to figure out a way to con her into coming to the hospital.”

“If he sends anything intercept it,” said Sam. “But make it look like it was sent successfully.”

“Any sign of him being arrested?” asked Brown.

“His probation officer has been trying to set up a hearing to revoke his probation, but there seems to be something wrong with his internet, he keeps losing the connection before he can complete the form.”

“Try to make sure nobody pulls him in for the next couple of hours,” said Erskine, “I’ve got an FBI attorney on his way there but he’s stuck in traffic in Trenton. Something about a car catching fire and blocking the road.”

“You’re really going to help that wise-ass?” asked Brown.

“I said I would, and I think he’s trying to be helpful in his own weird way. Believe me, if he does anything to mess things up I will not be on his side

Erskine’s phone rang; he listened for a moment then said “Marissa left her room before my agent got there. Can you locate her?”

There was a short pause, then Acid Burn said “Her phone’s on the road heading your way. I figure she’s about four minutes behind you, maybe less if she pushes it. Watch out for a green Hyundai with rental plates.”

“Damn it,” said Sam.

The driver switched off the lights and sirens a few hundred yards before they reached the facility. When they reached it he showed ID to the security guard, who let them drive in then, on Erskine’s instructions, closed the main gates. “Turn left then right along lane six,” said Acid Burn, “the locker is on the third intersecting row, row C, running between lanes five and six.”

“Okay,” said Erskine, “We’ll get out at row B and go in from there on foot. Agent Johnson, take the car around to lane five and be ready to block anyone coming out in that direction. If you get involved, watch out for her throwing any liquid at you. Avoid swallowing, inhalation, or skin contact.”

“Do you want me to call for more support?” asked the driver.

“No time, and we don’t want to spook her.”

“Got it.” Johnson dropped them at the intersection then turned into row B as they went on to row C.

“On your left, about midway along the row,” said Acid Burn. “It’s the only unit that’s open.”

“I see it,” murmured Sam. There was a glimmer of light in the opening. “Okay, we don’t want to spook her. I’ll talk to her from the entry, you two stay out of sight.”

Erskine reluctantly nodded; he and Brown positioned themselves in the slightly recessed entry of the next unit, taking care not to touch the shutter in case it rattled or set off an alarm.

Sam walked forward until she could see inside. The unit was half-full of furniture and boxes, and a brunette woman – Remy Hadley – was sitting at a desk, carefully packing a familiar-looking mailer.

“Doctor Hadley,” said Sam. “I’m Doctor Samantha Finn, I’d like to speak to you for a moment.”

“What do you want?” said Remy, glancing over her shoulder.

“I’m with Homeland Security,” said Sam. “I need to ask you some questions about the packages you’ve been sending.”

“Packages?” said Remy, then looked down at the table and sighed. “Okay, I’d be stupid to say I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We’ve accounted for thirty-two vials. I need to know what happened to the other twenty.”

“And if I don’t tell you?”

“We have very good investigators, we’ll figure it out sooner or later. But I’d like to stop this before anyone else is killed.”

“Killed? I never meant to kill anyone!” Remy turned from the table, her hands empty, and Sam felt a moment of relief.

“You sent a package to Jason King,” said Sam, “He had the silver morph reaction to the drug, but doesn’t seem to have been able to breath in that form. They’ve got him on a ventilator but they don’t expect him to regain consciousness.”

“Shit. I never meant for that to happen.”

“We also have a mail handler who lost a hand when one of the vials broke. Your friend Wilson took one, so far as we can tell it hasn’t helped him, apart from that we’ve been very lucky. I’d like things to stay that way.”

In the distance Sam heard a car horn and someone shouting.

“I think Marissa just arrived. She loves you, I hope you realise that.”

“Don’t let her come near this unit – I broke two vials yesterday, there’s probably still some contamination.”

Sam wanted to step away, but forced herself to stay where she was. “Do you really want her to remember you as a mass murderer?”

“No.”

“Okay then. If you’ll come with me, let’s try and fix this mess before things get worse.”

She backed out of the storage unit, and Remy followed her out. Erskine stepped forward and began to read her her rights.

* * *

Crossovers this chapter – _House M.D., The O.C._


	8. Chapter 8

“It all started in California,” said Remy Hadley. “I was taking a vacation, staying with friends in Oxnard. One evening the news was all about the FDA crackdown on Paradise Valley Chemical. One of the things that was mentioned was that the FDA was sending a medical team to study genetic effects on the plant workers, and some talking head scientists were saying the stuff could possibly change people’s DNA, affect their neural functions. It got me wondering what it would do for someone like my brother; we’d just found out he was positive for Huntingdon’s Chorea. My mother died of it, and I knew that the odds were pretty good that I was affected too, but I was scared to get myself tested. I decided to see if I could get hold of some GC-161… I knew it probably wouldn’t be useful, and I didn’t really plan to try it unless there was really nothing to lose, but I decided it had to be worth a shot.”

“How did you get hold of the drug?” asked Erskine.

“I had a couple of weeks to go before I had to be back in Princeton. So I guessed that they’d need some temps in Paradise Valley, faked up four CVs with different skills they might need, and sent them to every recruiting agency I could find in the area. I’d bought some cheap cell phones and I gave them as my contact numbers. I thought that I might be offered one of the technical jobs which would give me access to GC-161, but the only call I got was for the office job, they were really short-staffed and took me on without waiting for references. I took it and hoped I’d come up with something that gave me access to the labs or the factory.”

“When did you become aware that Grey Matter Technologies had samples of GC-161?”

“My fourth day there. Someone forwarded an email that Grey Matter had sent to the FDA in Albuquerque; I told the FDA that Paradise Valley Chemical would arrange to collect it, and told Grey Matter that the FDA would courier it back to California. The rest of it was just paperwork, and I had all of the office supplies I could possibly want. The only hard part was getting hold of proper FDA ID, but one of the permanent staff left hers on her desk when she went to lunch, I scanned it and made the fake from that, edited in my own photo and a fake name and ID number.”

“Did you immediately leave for Albuquerque?”

“Faking the ID and covering my tracks took most of my free time the next day. After that I went off, left a phone message saying my grandmother was in hospital and I’d have to look after my grandfather for the next few days, and headed to Albuquerque. The rest of it was pretty easy.”

“What did you do with the GC-161 after that?” asked Sam.

“Mostly stored it one place or another for the next couple of years, read the literature about GC-161 as it appeared, and tried to figure out a way to use it to save my brother. By then there were rumours of people with superpowers in Paradise Valley, and the number of cancer cases reported had rocketed. I thought about getting rid of it, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

“Go on.”

“Around then Terawatt showed up, and the reports began to mention an antidote for GC-161 the police were using on super-criminals. I tried to get hold of some but I didn’t have the right contacts in law enforcement. Then my brother’s condition started to deteriorate rapidly, and I knew I was out of time. I left Princeton to take care of him, and when things got really bad we tried the GC-161.”

“How did you administer it?” asked Sam.

“Orally first, then when that didn’t work I tried injecting it. None of it worked.”

“How much did you use?”

“Five vials orally, two more by injections, over three weeks or so. The last time he started to show an allergic reaction, and there wasn’t any other effect, so we left it at that.”

“And then?”

“His condition continued to deteriorate over the next three months. We tried another vial orally, but he had a much stronger anaphylactic reaction, I had to use an epipen to stabilise him. After that it was clear it was pointless.”

“And that’s when you helped him to die.”

“At the end of the fifth month.”

“I’m sorry to remind you of it. Moving on, why did you decide to mail the GC-161?”

“The more I heard about it, the more I thought that it should be developed for medical use. There have to be ways to make it safer, to target specific conditions. But the only people working on it are criminals, and all they want to do is increase the mutagenic effects and create more supervillains. I thought that if even one or two prominent people were helped by it they’d have to allow medical research. When I heard about Wilson I decided to try it.”

“Why send four vials?”

“I didn’t know how much would do the trick, I wanted to give them a good chance.”

“What were your criteria for choosing them?”

“I started out looking for public figures suffering from incurable illnesses that might respond to a change in metabolism or renewed cell growth. Then…”

*

“It looks like we’ve accounted for all of the GC-161,” said Sam. “She’s told us where she disposed of the vials she gave to her brother, a hazmat team is checking that out now, and the rest were in her storage unit. The cleanup crew here found the remains of the vials she dropped yesterday. If there’s no discrepancy I think the immediate problem is solved.”

“Why wasn’t her brother affected?” asked Erskine. “I got a little lost in the technicalities.”

“Some people have natural immunity, which seems to be genetic. It’s probable she has it too, she was splashed yesterday without any obvious effect.”

“So what do we charge her with?” asked Brown. “Mailing the GC-161 across state and national boundaries is a Federal offence, of course, I’m not sure what else applies.”

“I’m not entirely sure that’s true,” said Sam. “It isn’t a prohibited drug in the usual sense, there’s an FDA ban on manufacturing it but the situation isn’t nearly as clear-cut as it is with narcotics. If anything it’s more like quack medicines like laetrile.”

“How much publicity do we want to give it?” asked Erskine. “Her girlfriend’s already lawyering her up. If Hadley had even one success she could probably claim justification and have a good chance of getting off.”

“The hell of it is that she isn’t entirely wrong. Thalidomide deformed thousands of children when it was used as a morning sickness drug, but it’s useful in treating some forms of cancer and some of the complications of leprosy. Most of the controlled drugs have medical uses. Any doctor could give you a dozen examples of drugs and therapies that are neglected because it’s almost impossible to get permission to work with them.”

“That doesn’t really help here and now.”

“I’m sorry. After her brother died she plead guilty to over-prescribing to avoid a murder charge. It’s a charge that might stick if we prosecute her, there have been some cases involving unconventional therapies. Sentencing tends to be fairly lenient, but this is a second offence; at a minimum she’ll lose her medical license, since people were hurt I'd imagine she'd probably do more jail time.”

“The French want to charge her with criminal negligence,” said Brown. “Couldn’t we do that too?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” said Erskine. “All I know is that I’m pretty sure this doesn’t come under the Patriot Act, which means that the SRI and Homeland Security don’t really need to get involved in the prosecution.”

“I’ll tell O’Neill.”

*

“I think you’d better fire me,” Sam said two weeks later.

“Why would I want to do that?” asked Jack O’Neill.

“Doctor Hadley’s taking the plea bargain the Federal Prosecutor offered her, but her attorneys want me to speak on her behalf when it comes to sentencing. I think I should.”

“That isn’t necessarily a problem. Terawatt put in a good word for Azure Crush and Victor Creedy.”

“Terawatt wasn’t on your official payroll. Like it or not, this case is opening up a public debate, and while I deplore her methods, I’m going to make the strongest case I can for controlled research into medical uses of GC-161 and the other new drugs and technologies that are appearing. I don’t think I can really do that and work for you without a conflict of interest. If you fire me it’s clear that you don’t support me officially. Or I’ll resign if you think that will cause fewer complications.”

“Damn it. I was hoping that this case would lure you into working for us full time. It sounds like you’re more likely to end up running for office.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

**Epilogue**

Doctor Samantha Finn eventually became a campaigner for medical reform, which did, of course, lead her into politics and ultimately to the Presidency. Spin-offs from the research she sponsored include successful treatments for Huntingdon’s chorea, multiple sclerosis, most forms of cancer and dozens of other conditions; mostly they were not directly derived from GC-161.

Jed Bartlet advised Samantha Finn early in her political career, but died before the medical programs she sponsored bore fruit. His widow was Surgeon General for the last three years of Samantha Finn’s presidency.

Walter White died seven months after Remy Hadley’s arrest. Although his blood tests showed some evidence of genetic changes caused by GC-161, it did not appear to be the cause of his cancer.

Coincidentally, James Wilson died later the same day. In the weeks after his exposure to GC-161 he discovered that his dexterity was greatly improved; as well as becoming ambidextrous, he was able to juggle up to eleven balls. It did not affect his cancer.

Greg House served two weeks in prison, was paroled to give evidence in Remy Hadley’s trial and to work with the SRI, and eventually became a free man some months after Wilson’s death. Three weeks later he resigned from Princeton Plainsboro and dropped out of sight. Some months later a random audit of stored evidence revealed that the full GC-161 vials taken from James Wilson had been opened and carefully re-sealed, and actually contained a mixture of tap water and food dye. This was initially thought to have occurred after the trial, but later investigation found circumstantial evidence that House visited Wilson the evening the vials arrived, and purchased a bottle of food dye of the correct brand in a convenience store at around 10 PM. His current whereabouts are unknown.

Jason King was on life support for several more months but began to show very slow signs of recovery and eventually regained consciousness. While he was still physically in his late eighties he had lost all memories of his life after (approximately) 1973, and never recovered them. He spent the remainder of his life with the personality of a man in his forties trapped in an increasingly frail body.

Remy Hadley served eighteen months in prison. Most of her savings were seized to pay Mathéo Granet the compensation demanded by the French courts and to cover Jason King’s continuing medical expenses. After her release she married Marissa Cooper, and they stayed together for the rest of Remy’s life. After her death Marissa dedicated much of her time and money to support for Samantha Finn’s cause, and served three terms as Congresswoman for California's 48th congressional district.

With one or two possible exceptions everyone mentioned in this story eventually dies.

“Everybody Dies.” - A common sentiment attributed to Greg House, among many others.

**End**

Crossovers this chapter – _House M.D., The OC._


	9. Cast List, Notes and Acknowledgements

**Cast List**

Characters in approximate order of appearance (if not invented for this story). Acronyms used are _TSWoAM_ for _The Secret World of Alex Mack_ and _TSRoAM_ for _The Secret Return of Alex Mack_. Some spoilers follow:

Dr. Samantha Finn was originally a character in _Buffy_ Season 6, with back-story developed in _TSRoAM_. She is married to Major Riley Finn ( _Buffy_ seasons 4-6, _TSRoAM_ ). It’s canon for _TSRoAM_ that she and her husband are “Breslynn Orphans,” genetically enhanced children created by an evil conspiracy (benefits include enhanced intelligence, strength, and stamina), and that she eventually becomes President.

Jack O’Neill and Sergeant Walter Harriman originate in _Stargate SG-1_ but are based on the versions in _TSRoAM_.

Willow Rosenberg (AKA Acid Burn) originates in _Buffy_ but is based on the version in _TSRoAM_ , an extremely gifted hacker.

Josiah “Jed” Bartlet and his wife originate in _The West Wing_ but are very AU in this story; his illness became public knowledge early in his political career, and his highest office was state governor.

Hermione Granger is from the _Harry Potter_ series but is based on the version seen in _TSRoAM_ and its prequel _Hermione Granger and the Boy Who Lived_ ; a non-magical British intelligence officer.

Stephen Hawking is real, or as real as anyone who has played himself on _Big Bang Theory, Futurama, Star Trek: The Next Generation_ and _The Simpsons_ can be. The version mentioned in this story is entirely fictitious.

Dani Atron is the “good twin” of the villainous Danielle Atron, from _TSWoAM_. See _TSRoAM_ for the circumstances of her “birth.”

George Mack is the heroine’s father in _TSWoAM_ and _TSRoAM_.

Inspector Erskine is from the TV series _The FBI_ , and has previously appeared in _TSRoAM_.

Inspector Kevin Brown is based on Agent K from _Men in Black_ ; in this world there are currently no alien visitors, and he was never recruited to MIB. Instead he joined the USPS (as seen in _Men in Black II_ ), eventually becoming a member of the Postal Inspection Service.

Dr. Denise Marceau was a Nobel winner in _The Prize_ (1963).

Walter White and his associates appeared in _Breaking Bad_ but are AU for that series; in this world they continued to work together and White never became a criminal.

Dr. Lawrence Fleinhardt and associates are from _Numb3rs_. His visit to Princeton and broken ankle are the main changes from that series’ canon.

Jason King (played by Peter Wyngarde) was originally a character in the British TV series _Department S_ (1969) and _Jason King_ (1971-2). He was a “swinging” adventure story writer and occasional secret agent, and has been the inspiration for several other characters, most notably Austin Powers in films and Jason Wyngarde (Mastermind) in Marvel Comics. Since Jason Wyngarde is mentioned as a fictional character in _TSRoAM_ it’s likely that an actor named Wyngarde played one of King’s characters in this universe.

Gregory House, Remy Hadley, James Wilson and associated characters are from _House M.D._ They are much like the canon versions of these characters.

Marissa Cooper was a bisexual character in _The O.C._ , who had an on-off relationship with another female character, Alex Kelley. Kelly was played by Olivia Wilde, who later played Remy Hadley in _House_. In this universe Marissa’s Orphan strength and robust health helped her survive the car crash that killed her in canon; she sobered up, went to college, became a successful businesswoman, and eventually fell in love with Remy. Obviously she has a type…

Mentioned:

  * GC-161 is a diet food additive which triggers superpowers in some users in _TSWoAM_ and _TSRoAM_. The slang term “Geec” first appeared in stories by hysteriumredux.
  * Terawatt is the superhero identity adopted by Alex Mack, the heroine of _TSWoAM_ , in _TSRoAM_.
  * Oscar the chimp appeared in two episodes of _TSWoAM_. His whereabouts in the _TSRoAM_ universe are known only to Diane Castle.
  * Azure Crush is from _TSRoAM_ ; she’s the super-powered version of Jo Baker, a character in _TSWoAM_.
  * The LA Tribune was the newspaper that employed most characters in the TV series _Lou Grant_.
  * Umbrella Corporation is from the _Resident Evil_ franchise, and was one of the evil organisations of _TSRoAM_.
  * Acid Burn’s “contacts in Chicago”; see the Teraverse stories by Batzulger.
  * “Something about a car exploding” in Trenton; a fairly obvious _Stephanie Plum_ reference.
  * Jesse Custer was the hero of Vertigo Comics’ _Preacher_ (soon to be a TV series). In this universe, without supernatural forces, he became a televangelist.
  * Ex Police Chief Ironside, played by Raymond Burr, was the main character of the TV show _Ironside._
  * Victor Cready is a metahuman who first appeared in _TSRoAM_.



**Notes and Acknowledgements**

The Terawatt series by Diane Castle has inspired more than thirty stories by a dozen or more authors, taking in dozens of fandoms.

Most of these stories are about people who win the superpowers lottery, but it’s clear that they would actually be a tiny minority. GC-161 is probably the safest way to get superpowers, short of being born a Breslynn Orphan, but most of the people exposed to it are unaffected, experience useless or actively harmful changes, or suffer extremely nasty side effects such as cancer. Despite that, there is no shortage of people willing to try it. The closest analogy I could think of was the use of experimental medical treatments, which suggested the theme for this story. Somehow this suggested the idea of an anonymous “benefactor” mailing out the drugs to terminally ill patients, with a doctor attached to Homeland Security investigating. Samantha Finn was the obvious choice for this role, since she would be unable to do her usual work with Doctors Without Borders while recovering from her injuries, and was repeatedly shown as being intelligent and resourceful in _TSRoAM_.

Once I had the theme I needed a suitable “villain”. One initial idea was a supplier of illegal drugs, which suggested Walter White, but there are several other stories with similar sources for GC-161 and I wanted to do something different. This left Grey Matter Technologies as a useful red herring, with the real cause of the problem elsewhere. Someone working in the medical sector seemed a strong possibility, and House was the US medical series I knew best. Once I mentioned that to Diane Castle she suggested Remy Hadley as someone who might want the medical uses of GC-161 investigated, and the rest of the plot came together. She also suggested some of the House/Sam interaction, for which may thanks.

Essential reference sources were Wikipedia, the Internet Movie Database, and the extremely detailed House Wiki:  
http://house.wikia.com/wiki/House_Wiki

Many thanks to Diane Castle for allowing me to play with her toys, and to her and other authors in this universe, especially [Batzulger](http://www.tthfanfic.org/AuthorStories-15818/batzulger.htm) and [hysteriumredux](http://www.tthfanfic.org/AuthorStories-20375/hysteriumredux.htm), for their cooperation and patience.  



End file.
